How Abraham Lincoln solved his ‘deep state’ problem

Dillon Carroll teaches history at Hunter College and St. Francis College in Manhattan. He is currently writing a book on Civil War veterans and mental illness to be published by LSU Press.

From day one, President Donald Trump and his allies have railed against a sinister “Deep State” that has purportedly sabotaged the administration’s agenda. Trump routinely rages about these “unelected, deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas.” To Trump, these disloyal bureaucrats “are truly a threat to democracy itself.” As such, he labors to ferret out leakers so he can fire them.

While his constant bromides are uniquely Trumpian, the president is far from alone in having struggled with rogue members of his own administration. Numerous American presidents were frustrated and sometimes bamboozled by members of their own staff - few more so than Abraham Lincoln, who found effective ways of confronting dissent.

Lincoln grappled in the early days of his administration with members of his Cabinet seeking to thwart his agenda. But Lincoln reacted to these subordinates very differently than Trump. He handled incidents magnanimously, forgiving mistakes, lapses in judgment and even outright insubordination - and he did so in private. He even shielded subordinates, taking blame for their mistakes. This engendered fervent loyalty and more effective staff work. Ironically, Trump would get far more of what he wanted by behaving like Lincoln than through hunting out the deep state.

Almost immediately after entering office in 1861, Lincoln confronted a vexing decision: what to do about the remaining federal forts and armories in the South. The two most important forts, Pickens in Florida and Sumter in South Carolina, were still in federal hands but surrounded by fledgling Confederates. Robert Anderson, the commander of Sumter, was dangerously low on supplies and had requested to be restocked.

These were dangerous times - seven southern states had already formally seceded from the Union. Lincoln knew that resupplying Sumter risked igniting a war. But he had also promised in his inaugural address to "hold, occupy, and possess" all properties in federal hands. Failing to resupply the fort, or evacuating Anderson's detachment, would essentially mean waving a white flag at a time when Lincoln needed to strike a bold stance of resistance.

After soliciting the advice of his nascent administration, Lincoln decided to restock the fort with provisions only. This seemed to honor his pledge, while also fulfilling his promise to southerners that the "government will not assail you."

The decision horrified William Seward, Lincoln's new secretary of state. Seward had a reputation as a radical on slavery. In fact, he had been the Republican frontrunner until the desire for a moderate on the slavery issue catapulted Lincoln past him.

But for all his perceived radicalism, Seward was also a unionist who wanted to keep the country together. Following secession, he proposed compromises including a constitutional amendment that would prevent Congress from interfering with slavery where it already existed, and a convention to consider even more constitutional changes. He also successfully lobbied Lincoln to discard a promise in his inaugural text to "reclaim" federal properties, in favor of the less bellicose "hold, occupy, and possess" language, worried that anything stronger would provoke the South into war.

Now, Seward faced the prospect of watching helplessly as Lincoln charted a course he fervently opposed.

Lincoln's decision also threatened to break promises Seward had already secretly made to southerners. Believing he could convince Lincoln to follow his advice, Seward had used John Campbell, the Alabama-born Supreme Court Justice, to relay a message to his southern friends: Sumter would be abandoned.

At the time, Seward was operating under the grand delusion that he was actually the man in charge, operating a sort of shadow administration. This belief had been reinforced by adulation from people who hoped and believed this to be true. Letters poured into Seward's office telling him he was the leader of the administration, and only he could save the country.

This flattery, along with doubts that Lincoln was not equal to the moment, enticed Seward to take an extraordinary risk to try to push through his plan.

On April 1, Seward scribbled a jaw dropping memo to Lincoln. He criticized the president for failing to put forth a coherent "policy either domestic or foreign." He suggested that Lincoln should, in an effort to deflect attention from the secession crisis, call foreign nations to account for their meddling in the Western Hemisphere. Seward intimated that perhaps Lincoln should even declare war on European nations to unite North and South.

In pushing this gambit, Seward saw himself almost as the administration's prime minister. In his reckoning, the president was a mere figurehead - like a hereditary monarch - while the Cabinet shaped and carried out his agenda.

Lincoln jotted a written reply that he never sent (a habit of his) and probably rebuked Seward in person. Seward brushed the criticism off and pushed forward with his secret plan. Working behind Lincoln's back, Seward drafted orders for the warship Powhatan to chart a course for Fort Pickens to relieve the fort - which conflicted with Lincoln's own orders that the Powhatan accompany the relief ships to Fort Sumter. He had his son Fred deliver those orders to Lincoln to sign.

Fred Seward recalled Lincoln asking him, "Your father says this is all right, does he?" Fred nodded and Lincoln signed. Lincoln failed to peruse the orders, thereby missing that they conflicted with his own command. It seems that Seward hoped to delay the Sumter relief mission and substitute his own plans instead.

But Seward's plan backfired. After learning of the conflicting orders from the secretary of the Navy, Lincoln told Seward to contact the Powhatan and order it to return to the Sumter expedition. Amazingly, Seward apparently made one last-ditch effort to convince Lincoln to delay the Sumter resupply and instead focus on Fort Pickens. Lincoln refused.

Even though Seward had worked tirelessly to undermine Lincoln's policy, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles remembered that the president chalked it up to "carelessness, heedlessness on his part - he ought to have been more careful and attentive." Essentially, Lincoln presented Seward's purposeful deceit and insubordination as his own embarrassing mix-up. Lincoln went on to say that he "and not his Cabinet" was "in fault for errors imputed to them." He protected his administration from any rumors of infighting or designs - one of the jobs of the president of the United States.

Trump could learn a thing or two from Lincoln. By behaving this way, Lincoln protected his subordinates - even when those subordinates made mistakes or directly defied him - which preserved the public's confidence in the administration, as well as the personal reputation of his staff. Furthermore, Lincoln's generosity generated loyalty, as administration officials knew he would not disown them at the drop of a hat.

By contrast, Trump's incessant quest to expose the deep state fosters intense paranoia among his subordinates. They cannot trust Trump to shield them from anything. Not coincidentally, public trust in this president and administration remains abysmally low. And this posture weakens Trump's ability to recruit top-notch staff.

Adopting Lincoln’s forgiving treatment of staff might actually result in the sort of loyalty and team mentality that Trump craves - and it might even produce a more effective, more competent administration.